Ayn Rand’s ‘Anthem’ Gets Staged Off-Broadway

The stage adaptation of Ayn Rand’s novel “Anthem” started in previews this week Off-Broadway at the Jerome Robbins Theater. Playwright and composer Jeff Britting hopes the play also serves as a springboard for a “cultural conversation” about Rand’s ideas and philosophy.

Carol Rosegg

Matthew Lieff Christian as Equality and Sofia Lauwers as Liberty in the New York staging of “Anthem,” a play adapted from Ayn Rand’s novel.

Britting, who adapted the novel for the stage and composed an incidental music score for the production, believes the story of two young people born in a totalitarian world where the word “I” doesn’t exist will resonate with audiences and encourage them to stay for discussions after the 90-minute performance. The play opens Oct. 7.

“The message of ‘Anthem’ is the importance of your life and the importance and the preciousness of your ego,” says Britting, a curator at the Ayn Rand Institute in Irvine, Calif. The play was originally produced by the Austin Shakespeare Theater Company in 2011 in Austin, Texas, and its success there convinced Britting and the theater company’s artistic director, Ann Ciccolella, that they could stage the play in New York this year, coinciding with the 75th anniversary of the novel’s publication.

“What I have found over time is that people who are intrigued by Ayn Rand’s work are also interested in talking about it and expressing a view about it, either positive or negative,” says the 55-year-old West Hollywood resident.

Britting says the play, in addition to being a love story, poses the question: what if we live in a world where the common good is paramount and everything is done according to whether it satisfies the group? “All those notions are embedded in American culture. It was perfect that Ayn Rand pointed out all her life that the United States was a country that had a politics of individualism – the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness – but it never had a deep and clear understanding of the morality of individualism,” he says.

Britting says the theater company on Tuesday nights will also present academics, writers and other “distinguished people from the thought spectrum” to participate in the post-performance discussions, and for Saturday matinees, Ayn Rand scholars. “So we expect to have people left, right, center—having a chance to talk about the issues dramatized in the show,” says Britting, who will be here in New York during the play’s limited 10-week run.

“There’s more to Ayn Rand than what I consider superficial identification with recent politics,” he says. He cites references to Rand’s ideas and works in popular culture, in shows like “Mad Men” and “The Simpsons,” in art and comedy routines, on crossword puzzles, and in public-policy discussions. Rand’s influence “is all over the place but there’s been virtually no focal point for that cultural process…. I think this play will draw a lot of attention to the richness” of her presence in American cultural life, he says.

Carol Rosegg

Playwright and composer Jeff Britting adapted “Anthem” for the stage.

Getting the play staged in New York “has been the dream of my lifetime,’ says Britting. He tried over 20 years ago to stage “Anthem” here but wasn’t able to raise the money then.

He hopes the play will provoke the audience “because people today are confused, they’re upset. And they see that the world is going to hell and they are unclear why. And I’m saying that the reason why the world is going the way it is is because of the ideas that the world currently professes with regard to the purity and sanctity of individual life.” If people are denied the right to pursue their values, “the world is going to end up at some point in the future like the world of ‘Anthem,’ and that’s a very real practical problem.”